


There should be stars for great wars like ours

by Querulousgawks



Series: Tumblr Prompts [7]
Category: Firefly, Serenity (2005), Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Firefly Verse, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ghosts, Grief, M/M, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-05
Updated: 2015-06-05
Packaged: 2018-04-02 23:21:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4077628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Querulousgawks/pseuds/Querulousgawks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's some Alliance mind game, a holdover, the Operative's last trick: Logan's old secrets manifesting everywhere around them. <em>Where are you, how are you doing this, </em>he wants to scream, but he doesn't know which ghost he'd be railing at.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There should be stars for great wars like ours

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lodessa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lodessa/gifts).



> This is expanded from lodessa's Tumblr prompt: Logan/Weevil, one is a ghost haunting the other. This is also, um, an alternate AU from my other Veronica Mars/Firefly crossover, so the roles are shaken up a little.  
> The title is from Sandra Cisneros' _One Last Poem For Richard._

Weevil isn't lying, when he tells Veronica that he and Serenity will still fly true. They have ceded so much to the Alliance that the loss of one man (even this man, this lover, this pair of long hands curled in his collar or sure on the ship's controls) couldn't knock him off course. 

But he isn't lying about being tore up plenty, either. The other deaths hit him hard - first Felix, whose coffin was even heavier to lift with his dumbass corpse inside than when he'd first come to them, comatose and smuggling coveted Alliance organs in his own body. Dick made a tidy profit there, weeks of selling him rotgut whiskey to erase that sweet, cocky, suicidally stupid smile. No shipmate discount, of course, and he might have lost his savings to the habit if Logan hadn't caught him, swiped the tin from his hands and swore irritably to match him shot-for-shot.

Then Nandi, who had made V's smile easier than he'd seen it in years, whose last stand reminded him of the best reasons they'd fought for independence. Except it ended just the same, for her, as for every one else who had taken up arms beside them, and it felt worse that he'd had that second of believing. He had stood like a fool in the yard of the bordello when the baby took its first wailing cry, and thought that even if they lost, if the fucker got too close and they had to take the girls and run, they would at least have gotten the kid out _._ They'd be as safe on the move as they would on any border planet, probably safer. ( _Raise a baby,_ Logan had said blankly, _you and me and this crew, telling war stories over tea parties on the bridge._ Weevil had savored his bemusement a minute, grinning evilly:  _We already got the toys, flyboy. It could chew on your dinosaurs._ )They hadn't brought up children again, after.

Then the relentless ugly news as the Alliance closed in, burning out Mac's abbey and Cho's Nutrients and even Wanda Varner's little border world, rivalry apparently as much a death sentence as friendship - yeah, he mourned, before. He drank and swore, snarled at Logan and broke his hand on Dick's jaw and followed Veronica's orders in grim, blank silence instead of his usual sharp-eyed support. He grieved for every one of them.

But he never  _lost his gorram mind_ , and that's the only explanation for what's happening to him now.

On cue, the edge of the panel he's repairing warms and smooths back into place under his hand. Weevil just sighs, drops the unused torch back into its cradle, and takes another pull from the bottle he's been keeping close. "Must have still been some heat after the last time I shut it off," he says for form, because  _I just hallucinated the ship repairing itself_  will probably make Wallace nervous. And Wallace is nervous enough, double-checking switches as he eases Serenity upward. It's his first solo takeoff in years, first time for any of them without -  without their old pilot.

Time for some more whiskey.  _Dick might make that fortune after all,_  Weevil thinks, ignoring the skeptical look Wallace sends him in favor of shaking the tin thoughtfully, trying to judge how much is still inside. He's barely listening when Wallace says in that classic mech-head's tone of wonder, "Hey, this is weird..."

Then the ship stops. Dead in the air, just a second before she stutters  underneath them to pick up speed again - it's that signature filip in their smooth acceleration that only one man knew how to do, and it sends Weevil off the bunkhead with his forearm across a throat before he realizes what's happened. He just pulled their mechanic off the pilot's chair,  _in takeoff, Jesus,_ but he can't make himself care. It's gotta be some Alliance mind game, a holdover, the Operative's last trick: Logan's old secrets manifesting everywhere around them.  _Where are you, you fucker, how are you doing this,_ he wants to scream, but he doesn't know which dead man he'd be railing at.

They are still rising. The bottle clinks to a stop against the stair rail, and his senses come back online: the reek of whiskey, the tilt of the floor, Wallace talking steadily like he's been repeating himself a while. "It wasn't me, Weevil, I wouldn't do that to you. I can't, even, if I'd tried that trick we'd have a hole in the engine.  _I'm not driving this boat."_  

"Eli," Veronica's voice drops into the silence as Wallace trails off, looking wrecked and scared and compassionate at once the way only he could. Weevil has to look away from that expression, would have even without the old instinct to answer his captain. Veronica has her weapon out, pointed at him. It's comforting. He manages to step away from Wallace, brushing him off a little in sincere apology as the other man squeezes his arm. Of course Wallace would worry about him, even as he's attacked. Of course V would be protecting her crew, even from each other. Their familiarity settles him down, but only a little. The ship is still rising. No one could make a takeoff this smooth. No one else.

"Who the fuck is Eli?" Dick asks, ambling into the cockpit with his mouth full, and when Veronica rolls her eyes Weevil feels a laugh bubble up in his gut. Familiarity, all right. But then- 

"Who the fuck is  _taking off?"_ Meg yells as she hits the doorway, shouldering gracelessly past Dick to glare at Veronica, and suddenly Wallace is choking on laughter, gasping for air like he's just caught the punchline to the world's best joke. Everybody stares at him.

Wallace ignores them all to say earnestly, directly to Weevil, "It's Echolls, man. He's still flying." Every muscle in Weevil's body tightens up in hope and fear. Wallace gives him a small, wondering smile. "Serenity...she kept him."

***A few weeks later***

Eli Navarro - smuggler, widower, former champion of lost causes and current first mate of the Firefly class transport  _Serenity_  - is, when sober, certain of a few things. That Logan Echolls was a  _dick_ , for one; that Logan Echolls was the finest damn pilot he had ever known; and that Logan Echolls died in battle, getting his family to safe ground.

But now there's a new item on the list, transferred over from his non-sober convictions: that Logan Echolls…isn’t exactly gone.

Weevil smiles slowly and leans too far back in the pilot’s chair, straining the seat braces just the way his husband had hated the most. He isn’t touching the controls. Nevertheless, Serenity stalls for a second then gives a little sideways jerk, making him curse and scramble for balance.

“Cute,” he mutters to the empty room, “always so fucking cute.” The ship tips abruptly back onto course, sending something clattering down the hall. 

“No flirting in transit!” V hollers, just like she used to. This time it trails off to a mutter: “sure, Echolls, come on in. Distract my first mate, die a hero, in-corporeally possess my  _own gorram ship_ …” Weevil gives in and laughs.

Yeah, they're tore up plenty. But they’ll fly true.


End file.
